Curcumin (including curcumin, demethoxycurcumin, and bixdemethoxycurcumin), the main constitutent of herb Curcumia loga, had a wide spectrum of health-care and pharmacological effects, including radical-scavenging activity, antioxidant, anti-mutagens, anti-aging, radiation protection, anti-virus, anticancer, anti-hyperlipemia, anti-hypercholesterolemia, anti-atherosclerosis and antidepressant properties.
Although curcumin had a wide range of pharmacological effects, it was extremely difficult to dissolve in water, and its bioavailability was very low. It showed instability under alkaline or light conditions. All of these greatly limited its application in pharmacy fields. About 75% curcumin discharged from the feces after orally administration curcumin (1 g·kg−1), and only trace amount of curcumin was found in urine. The intestinal absorption of curcumin was poor by determination of blood and bile excretion level of curcumin. Curcumin, dissolved with 0.5% DMSO, was used by intraperitoneal injection in animal pharmacology test. All these shows that the poor water solubility, poor oral absorption, low bioavailability limited curcumin's application in the human body. Curcumin was easily degraded in alkaline solution. The 426 nm absorption of curcumin decreased to 50% after 5 min in pH7.4 phosphate buffer solution, only 10% after 10 min later and the solution was colorless in the end. Atanu Batik reports that Cu(II)-curcumin complex has free radical scavenging poperties in vitro test. But the poor water-solubility and low bioavailability of Cu(II)-curcumin limits its application in vivo level. Search of patent, there were no medical research reports on Cu(II)-curcumin complex on pharmacy application. And there was no medical research reports on the application of water-soluble polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) in the preparation of Zn(II)-curcumin SDs and its medical use before this application of this patent in China.
With improvement of the living standard and medical care, the average human lifetime becomes longer and longer. Problems of the senile become more remarkable than anytime before. According to the research in Senile Institute of China, the population of the aged has rapidly increased at an average rate of 3.32% per year. Until the end of 2006, the amount of people aged over sixty in China had reached 120 million, which was equivalent to 9.5% of the total population. China has become a “senile” country due to the continuous increase of senile population. Therefore, research and development of new drugs for anti-aging and prevention of common senile diseases, had become a hot topic in medicine fields.
Zinc, as an important constituent of various enzymes in vivo, exhibits effects of promoting growth, improving gustation, accelerating wound healing, enhancing immune functions and antioxidation. Zinc deficiency induces growth retardation, malnutrition, apositia, allolriopagia and dental ulcers.
Common senile diseases includes senile dementia, fading memory, hyperlipemia, cerebral ischemia, angiosclerosis, thrombogenesis, platelet aggregation, diabetes and infectious viral diseases and so on. And in many cases one patient would appear several such diseases at the same time. However, limited by single effect on only one certain disease for most medicines, lots of cases haven't achieved satisfactory curative results yet. Therefore, the developing a new kind of new drug with favorable complex effects on multi-agedness diseases mentioned above will be very important to the health of senile people.